


Paisley Sessions

by sleapyGazelle



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Post-Canon, Therapy, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 02:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleapyGazelle/pseuds/sleapyGazelle
Summary: Shiro walks into Garrison-mandated therapy not knowing what to expect. He walks out having learned a thing or two about himself.





	Paisley Sessions

## Session 1

“Why are you here, Mr. Shirogane? By the way, can I call you Shiro?”

“Everyone does.” There was no one left now who didn’t.

The room was smaller than Shiro had expected; though why he had expected a big room, he couldn't tell you. The sofa he was seated on had the potential to be extremely comfortable. But he sat upright, refusing to sink into its softness.

The walls were painted a light, bright green, the color of a particularly enticing grape. A large window let in daylight that was then softened by a beige curtain. It was the embroidery on those curtains that drew Shiro’s eyes, for no reason other than to give them something to focus on.

He traced the patterns with his eyes. Paisleys. Leaflets.

“I'm here because…” Shiro kept his breath steady as he considered the question. Because he was practically ordered to? Too on the nose. Because of the war? Too broad. Because of Adam? Too narrow. “Because of what I've experienced in this war.”

The therapist nodded. She was a friendly looking person, dressed business-casual, out of place as a Garrison official not in uniform. Her black hair streaked with the occasional gray gave him an odd sense of reminiscence. But he didn't dwell on that.

“Let's talk about that, then,” she suggested.

Shiro nodded, drumming his hands on his knees. Talking about what all happened since he decided to embark on the Kerberos mission—that was something he could do with a smoothness that came from habit, a detachment that came from practice.

“My crew and I were abducted by the Galra when we were exploring Kerberos,” he began. “My CO was sent to a work camp, while I was taken to the gladiator pits along with his son.”

He made his way through the much rehearsed story for the nth time, losing track of the value of n. It wasn’t until he got to his initial escape that he noticed his doctor wasn’t writing anything down. She’d started the session with her stylus poised over her tablet, but now the items lay discarded on the seat next to her. Her eyes lingered not on his mechanical forearm--not even on his missing upper arm--but on his face. She was staring at him with an analytic expression that made him less than comfortable.

“Dr. Shaheen? Is something wrong?”

Her face turned pensive, but no less friendly. “Not _wrong,_ necessarily.” She adjusted her position in her seat, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. “Why don’t we keep these discussions more informal?”

He noticed it was phrased as a suggestion, but her tone didn’t seem to invite argument. He shrugged. “Whatever you want, doc.”

Her posture deflated as if she’d disappointed herself. “I was afraid you might say that.” She gave him a sad smile that he didn’t know what to do with. “I think today was very helpful. I learned a lot about you, Shiro. How are you feeling?”

“Wait, that’s it?” It had only been, what, twenty minutes? “Don’t these things usually run for forty-five?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, informal. We can go as short or as long as we like. You’ve given me a lot to think about.” She reached for her tablet, switching out of the notetaking app to something else he couldn’t see. “How’s tomorrow for you?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

A smile. “Now you are.”

* * *

 

## Session 2

“Good morning, Doc.” Shiro had resumed his position on the sofa from the day before.

“Shall we begin?”

* * *

“I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy fairly early in my childhood. Increasingly frequent intramuscular injections of stimulant kept me in excellent physical form well into my teens and early twenties--”

“Shiro,” she interrupted.

Her tone was neutral, open even. But the interruption raised his hackles.

Walls went up between his consciousness and the memories he’d aired out to dry in winds blowing every which way. There was no judgment here, and _that_ made him feel a deep shade of vulnerable. Judgment, he could deal with with a stone facade; he had the high ground.

But pressure to dive deeper into his own mind and a lack of judgment left him exposed. There was no cover to crouch behind in those depths.

The patterns on the curtain were still there. Leaflets. A stem. Roses.

“I appreciate you trusting me with your story,” Dr. Shaheen went on. “I really do.”

There wasn’t a soul he had mistrusted with it. You can’t appreciate something that’s a given.

“But I’d like to ask more of you, if I may.”

She was going to ask, regardless. Yet she was treating him as if he were a fragile teluduv lens. The corner of his mouth twitched with unspoken irritation.

“I want to backtrack a bit. To the part where you found out about your condition.”

Dark days that he’d buried by shoveling so much else into his life. It was hardly relevant anymore, and he glossed over it whenever it came up.

“Tell me how you felt during those early days, before and just after getting diagnosed.”

Oh.

Roses. More stem. Falling petals.

“I…. It was a long time ago.”

Shaheen leaned back in her seat, and Shiro suddenly became aware of the empty space between the sofa and his back.

“Take your time, Shiro.”

Time was something he had far too much of these days. “I was never bothered by it.” He’d barely spoken the words and he could practically see Adam’s raised eyebrow. “At first,” he amended. “It was easily manageable; I only had to take some shots every few days. Even when the attacks got more frequent, they were able to give me a cuff I could just keep on my wrist. It was never as taxing as…it was made out to be.”

“Or did you refuse to let it tax you?”

Days when he couldn’t hide his sluggish movements enough, when his superiors sent him home early; nights when Adam rushed to refill the syringe, then held him through the shouts of slowly subsiding pain. Adam’s kisses, shaky with relief, against his cool, sweaty skin. Soothing whispers of his name—‘You're okay, Takashi; it's okay’—in his ear.

“I did the best I could.”

“You became a decorated officer during that time. I’d say your best was pretty good.”

“I had help.” He didn’t know why he said it so defensively, as if taking credit meant acknowledging everything he filled his life with. Everything he crammed into the front so that the sickness would be forced to take a backseat.

“Your family?”

Family. A word that only meant Adam, until he met Keith and the others. Until he found family light years away from home.

“Family.” He could neither confirm nor deny it.

“When family is just one single person, they can become everything to us.”

Or just another aspect of life, crammed into the car, slipped to the backseat because the front was getting too crowded.

Shaheen had read up on his file.

His eyes slid shut for a moment, and the hum from his arm grew louder in the silence.

“I need to go.”

“Shiro.”

He didn’t stop.

* * *

 

## Session 3

“I appreciate you coming back, Shiro. I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Honestly, Doc? Neither was I.”

The room felt different today, even though it looked the same.

When he settled onto the sofa, it sighed around him, as if remembering his weight. He stubbornly resisted the pull to sink into it. From its vantage point, he saw the curtains. Their embroidery was less obvious today; they weren’t closed fully, and a sliver of sunlight shone through the crack, blurring the curtain’s otherwise stark lines.

So there was something different today.

“Why don’t we start with something positive, today?” Shaheen suggested.

He took in her open, smiling face, and felt a pang of regret for his behavior last session.

Then he remembered why he’d acted that way, and his mouth soured.

He nodded.

Her grin widened at his agreement. “Excellent!” She picked up her tablet and then turned to him again. “Tell me about something good in your life.”

He blinked. Something good….

He stared ahead, seeking out patterns in the too-bright curtain until his eyes hurt.

A face swam into view. Intense, inquisitive eyes obscured by dark bangs. A hesitant frown next to a dull scar—a scar _he_ had put there.

“Keith.”

“Keith? The cadet? And…black paladin, was it?”

He nodded, the corners of his mouth turning up of their own accord. His back softened against the plush sofa around him. He sunk a bit deeper into it without meaning to. “He thinks I saved him. Because I brought him to the Garrison, helped him find his calling, supported him.”

“But you don't see it that way?”

Shiro laughed. “I've lost count of how many times he's saved my life. He brought me back from the dead.” The moment the words were out, his smile vanished.

It was the first time he'd acknowledged his own death out loud. He swallowed around a lump in his throat.

“You died?”

It was the obvious question. In therapy or out of it. It was the reason he didn't tell people.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I would've stayed that way forever, instead of just a few months, if not for Keith.”

“How did he bring you back?”

“By never giving up on me. Even when I was hurting him. Well, my clone was hurting him; I—

“This is all so ridiculous.”

“Earth got invaded by aliens, and was defended by a giant robot and a somehow gianter robot. The bar for ridiculous has just gone way up.”

It was a fair point. And yet Shaheen didn't know half the shit _he_ had seen.

“Keith saved me when I first escaped from the Galra. I met the rest of the team because of him.” It seemed like a lifetime ago.

And in a way, it was.

“I never could've thought that was the turn life would take when I decided to go on the Kerberos mission.”

“Was Keith a part of that decision?”

“He confronted me. He'd been listening at doors and he'd found out I was sick.”

“You hadn't told him?”

Shiro's eyes narrowed. “He didn't need to know.” He thought back to that time—his own refusal to let a scary sounding genetic disorder take over his life. “I couldn't let the disease win,” he admitted, sighing. “Every person who looked at me differently after finding out was a victory for the disease. And Keith? He was practically still a kid. I didn't need him thinking he had to protect me. I had enough of that from Adam.”

“You sound like you resent that.”

“I just wanted to follow my dreams. When Adam was threatening to stand in the way, I pushed him aside. Even though it meant losing him. And I didn't want to have to lose Keith too.”

He fell silent, and Shaheen didn't say anything either.

It was stupid, now that he had the benefit of hindsight. It was stupid to think he'd lose Keith. Before, he'd been hiding a disease that was almost invisible from the outside. And when he came back to Keith, it was with an alien metal arm that glowed purple. And Keith was at his side, stronger than ever.

“It was stupid to lose Adam,” he whispered. His eyes warmed with tears threatening to spill over onto his clasped hands. He eyed the curtains again. The sun had moved, or perhaps hidden behind some clouds, for now he could make out the embroidery again. His eyes automatically traced a leaf until it was no longer blurry. “Gosh,” he forced a chuckle, “how long have we been at it?”

Shaheen didn't laugh. “Do you want to call it a session, Shiro?”

He very much did.

* * *

 

## Session 4

“Last time we ended on an interesting note.”

Greetings exchanged, they'd gotten right into it. Shiro eyed her face for once instead of the embroidery behind her.

“Did we?”

She nodded, gaze boring into his. No nonsense. He broke eye contact first.

Rose. Stem. Paisley.

“You said it was stupid to lose Adam,” she reminded him unnecessarily.

Shiro swallowed dryly.

“Shiro, it would help you to talk about why.” Her tone was aggravating, condescending in its understanding—her words laughable in their simplicity.

“What is there to talk about?” he ground out. He had to force his jaw to unclench.

“Why it was stupid to lose him,” she replied calmly. “Not sad, not hard, but stupid. Why stupid?”

“Of course it was sad! Of course it was hard!”

“I didn't say it wasn't. Just that those weren't the first words you used.”

Paisley. Leaflets. Stem.

When he didn't answer, she prodded, “Why do you think that is, Shiro?”

“Because he wasn't supposed to die first!” he shouted.

He was breathing like he'd just fought Sendak again. His new forearm glowed warmly.

Shaheen looked at him just that calmly, unperturbed by the arm’s anxious humming, prompting him to continue with just the turn of her brow.

He wasn't supposed to explode. That wasn't his thing.

He waited until his breathing stabilized. But his heart wasn't playing along. It promised to beat right into his throat at the next sign of danger. Danger that Shaheen invited with her next words.

“Do you feel guilty about outliving him?”

“Guilty?!” He sputtered. Guilty. “I was terminal! He wasn't supposed to—” He was shouting again. A tendon snapped over his jaw as he realized he _had_ technically died first. He just sucked at staying dead.

“Shiro, here you can yell if you need to. There's no need to hold back.”

“I CAN’T CATCH A FUCKING BREAK!” He was on his feet without meaning to be.

He stared at her calm brown eyes, stared defiantly through swimming tears he refused to release. Hold back? She just didn't get it.

“How am I alive and he’s dead? I’m the one whose days were numbered. He was the healthy one.”

She leaned forward, eyes encouraging.

Fine. He sat down again, spine rigid against an unyieldingly soft surface.

“I've been screwed over from day one.” He answered her next question before she could ask it, “By life.”

“How?” There was an underlying note of excitement in her voice. He ignored it in favor of the weight he could suddenly feel in his chest—like he was finally noticing something that had always been there.

His breathing was labored again, and it brought an unpleasantness on his tongue. “You know what the synopsis of my life is, doc?” He was quieter now—but there were cracks in his usual misleading calm. “Born with a terminal illness. Pursued my dreams against the odds, only to get abducted, tortured, and cloned by aliens. Escaped, rescued by Keith and the others, became black paladin. Died, replaced with a clone, brought back, replaced the clone’s consciousness. Returned to Earth only to find Adam gone.”

“None of that is fair.” A statement of fact.

“It damn well isn't.”

A breeze fluttered in through the opening between the curtains. When they settled again, Shiro couldn't find the last leaf he'd counted. He realized he'd been counting.

“Adam said I shouldn’t expect to find him waiting for me when I got back. I loved my dreams more than him. But his words came true in the worst way.”

‘You couldn’t have known.’ ‘It’s not your fault.’ The words of comfort never come. He'd been avoiding them the whole time, and now he waited for them—but she didn't utter them. Instead,

“What did Adam mean to you, Shiro?”

“I loved him, once.”

He went to cross his arms, like he sometimes did when thinking, and his left hand slid right through empty space. Just when he thought he was getting used to the new arm.

“I haven’t heard my given name on anyone’s tongue since the last time I spoke to him,” he admitted for the first time. “And we fought and broke up.” The words were out there, in the open. He looked up at Shaheen’s face and realized they meant much less to her than to him.

“Do you want to be addressed by that name again?”

“No,” he said, and it was the truth. “It would remind me of him.”

“Who do you like to hear your name from?”

He considered the question, and six faces smiled at him—the unlikeliest of friend groups. “My team.”

“Found family is a beautiful thing. It can give you so much.”

He thought about the synopsis again. “They already have.”

“And they will continue to, even as you seek closure over Adam. All you have to do is let them in. Like you let me in, today.”

He looked up, and she was smiling. He felt like a child again, being praised by a teacher for doing well in class. His stomach turned.

“I'm going to give you some homework, Shiro.”

How on brand. For a bizarre moment, he wished Keith was there to groan at the dry joke.

“I'm back in elementary school,” he quipped.

She smiled indulgently. Something his second grade teacher used to do a lot of, coincidentally.

“I need you to talk to someone about Adam.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could,

“You need closure. After the way you two left things, not getting the chance to talk to him upon your return is preventing you from letting go of him.”

“I let go of him a lifetime ago, when I made my decision to go to Kerberos.”

“You let him go from your life. Now you need to let him go from your conscience.”

“I don't want to,” he muttered, more dangerously than he'd intended. He'd wronged a man who deserved better.

“Then we need to get you to a place where you do want to.”

* * *

 

## Session 5

“Did you do the assignment from last time?”

He nodded cautiously. The cushions pulled at him, but he resisted.

“Oh, good! I was worried I'd have to scold you about how you had a whole week to do it. I've never been good at that sort of thing.”

He couldn't tell if she was joking.

“Did you talk to Keith?” she guessed. “You mentioned your closeness to him.”

Keith. The rock in his life. The boy—now man—who would do anything for him. “No.”

“Oh?”

“Rescuing me has kind of become his thing. Not that I don't appreciate it, but…as much as he worries for me, I want to be— I just needed someone else for this.” Someone who understood and could level with him, listen and be his friend without needing to ‘fix’ it. Someone who wouldn't be hurt by his pain as much as Keith would.

“I see. That's wise of you to recognize. And how did it go?”

She had listened. Her two-tone eyes had glistened with sympathy and grief of her own. “I felt… lighter after telling her,” he admitted gruffly.

Shaheen smiled her approval. “Was she one of the people you were thinking of when we talked about found family?”

He nodded. Found family—no need for labels, just mutual love.

“You're quite a bit less talkative today than last time,” she mused with a reminiscent smile.

He shrugged apologetically. He'd done a lot of talking, all very recently. He was all talked out.

“Did you tell her everything you told me?”

“You mean when I yelled at you?”

She only smiled knowingly.

“Yeah. Not in the same way, maybe; but, I told her how I felt. How…tired I am of just dealing and coping with things.”

“Did she…?”

“She understands,” Shiro explained. “She's been through a lot too. _Grieved_ a lot too.” His eyes sought out the curtains, and the leaflets along the stem reminded him of her crown. The crown she never took off, not even when there was the planet it represented was no more. Never took off—except when it meant saving him from the bionic arm that was rejecting his body. “She thinks I'm trying my best,” he added. “And that it’s all I can do.”

“How does it make you feel to hear that?”

He swallowed, looked away. He traced a rose on the curtain with his eyes and thought of the juniberry flowers she'd never get to see again. “It's true,” he said finally. “But it's not fair.” He hated sounding like a whiny schoolboy. He'd never whined; no matter what hand life dealt him. But it was true—had always been true.

“What changed to make you admit that?”

And the loss of Adam Waleed had forced his hand.

“Doc, I may have lost control last time. But even aside from the yelling, that's just my truth. What I said…” he trailed off.

She let him ponder in silence for a while before picking up the thread. “What you said is what you feel. No one can demand that you change that. Not even yourself. Do you understand that?”

He looked up at her, bemused at her choice of words.

“I'm really happy that you've managed to talk about your traumas and your emotions with someone you consider a friend,” she said. “Now I want you to stop that.”

His eyebrows rose higher as his bemusement grew.

“Talking to others is only one part of coming to terms with what happened. But the person you _couldn't_ talk to is holding you back.”

 _Oh._ He looked for the last pattern he'd traced in the embroidery but couldn't find it.

“Shiro.”

 _“What?”_ he snapped. His eyes settled on some random petals. In the moment it took for his eyes to focus, he was reminded of the flower crown filters Adam loved, the selfies Adam had forced him to pose for. He'd deleted them from his phone after the breakup, but he still remembered the broad smiles, the cheeks pressed together, the eyes gleaming with young love.

“Shiro, do you know what you would've said if you could've seen him again?”

“That's a double hypothetical, Doc.”

“Then make one of them a reality.”

He shifted his eyes the couple of inches from the curtain to her face, but it offered no more clues as to her meaning.

“I want you to write a letter,” she elaborated, “to Adam. Put everything in it that you feel you wanted to say but didn't get to.”

His mouth twisted into an angry frown.

Before he could say anything though, she continued, “Take as long as you need to complete it. Don't hold back. Of course, ‘as long as you need’ doesn't mean you can keep putting it off.”

“How are you going to enforce that?” he asked, half teasing, half genuinely curious.

She smiled with a hint of deviousness that set him right on edge.

“I still need to sign off on your form. I'll do that once you finish the letter.”

Shiro breathed in deeply, then let it out all at once. He stood up to leave. “I'll see you when I've finished my homework, then.”

If she'd noticed the resentment in his tone, she didn't react to it. “See you soon.”

## ~*~*~

~~Dear~~

~~Hi~~

Adam,

~~I am writing to you because~~

I can only apologize for the timing of what I am about to say, that it took a stranger urging me to actually talk to you, that you'll never actually get to read any of this.

Putting pen to this paper has been one of the hardest things I've had to do. (And I literally fought aliens for my life.) But now that I'm doing it, and staring at this disembodied hand instead of the paper, I still don't know d I can express everything I'm feeling.

The main thing is that I still can't believe it was you.

I did what I did because I was dying. But because of it, I'm still here. And you're the one who's gone.

I knew I would lose you if I did it, but it didn't matter because you were going to lose me anyway. And now here we are. Or at least…here I am.

I did die, you know. But I wasn't good at it.

And I'm sorry.

~~\- Tak~~

~~\- Shi~~

\- Takashi

## ~*~*~

Adam,

My doc says I have survivor’s guilt, which is probably true, clinically. But it literally makes no sense that between the two of us, it was you.

Anyway, my last letter addressed the surface of what I was feeling. And ~~I need to~~ it's important to scratch more than just the surface.

What would I have said to you if ~~I'd~~ we'd actually come face to face? If we hadn't missed each other by minutes or however long it was. If you hadn't gone somewhere I sometimes yearn to follow.

I'm actually more concerned with what you would've said to me. And I know that's awful because I was the one who walked away from an ultimatum.

I loved you, Adam. You were often better to me than I deserved. But sometimes what I needed was different than what we had.

When you gave me that choice, and I realized that making it wasn't as difficult as it should've been, it was the unfortunate answer to an unasked question between us.

You know I hate hypotheticals, but who knows how much we'd grown. Whether we could have worked better without looming death constantly third-wheeling us.

You know, alternate realities are a thing, so maybe there's one where—

But in this one, I still remember you, your life—with me and without, and the reason you sacrificed it without hesitating.

And despite the you-shaped rock in my chest, I know I need to find out who I am without you, and without space to drown in.

I may not be ready for that just yet, but I think that's okay.

Thank you, Adam. And once again, I'm sorry. Not because it wasn't me, but because none of it was our fault.

\- Takashi

* * *

 

Session 6

“You're a writer, Shiro.”

He shrugged. He didn't know what that meant.

“I appreciate you writing that second letter,” Dr. Shaheen continued.

He hadn't really taken it as a choice. But maybe that had been a conscious decision after all.

“And I appreciate you sharing them with me.”

He looked up into her warm eyes, unsure how to convey that he trusted her now.

“Is there anything you want to say in parting?”

“Shouldn't I be asking you that?”

Her face settled into a familiar knowing smile. “All along, this has been about you. I can't teach you how to handle your grief, because there are no answers. Only questions.

And we can only do our best to ask them.”

Shiro's face cracked in a way that felt foreign—forgotten. It was a smile. “You're getting philosophical on me, Doc.”

“I guess I did end up saying the parting words. Well, I've signed your form.” She handed the official-looking envelope, along with his letters, back to him.

“I'm glad I got to do this,” he managed. At her nod, Shiro rose and, with a final glance at the stem-and-paisley drapes, walked out of Dr. Shaheen’s office.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [writing blog](https://sleapywolfwrites.tumblr.com/) | [VLD sideblog](https://shirogane-atlas.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sleapygazelle)


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